Let me start by apologizing for the acronym soup in the headline. Let me explain. Public relations as a profession needs to stress Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and resist the increasing push toward Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA).
So now, let me explain my explanation. I have been thinking a lot about the role of public relations in social responsibility and social advocacy in recent months. I’ve read books and attended webinars and talked to lots of people. What follows is a condensed summary of how I came to my own opinion articulated in the first paragraph.
CSR Appropriately Stresses Responsibility to All
CSR has a long history and has been discussed much in trade publications and academic literature. A brief and accessible history of CSR traces the concept back to the 1800s. Mean while, academics have often cited the more formalized Carroll’s Pyramid of CSR, which states that businesses have four responsibilities–economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic. Today, companies are so engaged in CSR that news of it is aggregated on CSR Wire. The evolution of CSR has blossomed today to include formal and transparent attempts to measure and verify CSR efforts (to avoid greenwashing and image over reputation) such as the B-Corporation movement.
Tangled into all of this is the notion of stakeholders. This means that it is an imperative that businesses not think only about profit, but consider all of the people who could be affected by their success or failure. Here too,. Stakeholder Theory is not new, dating to 1984, and asserts that organizations need to understand and respond to the interconnected relationships between and among various publics. I’ve always considered this fundamental public relations, but it has gained currency and attention in recent years.
At several recent conference sessions, webinars and blog posts of the Arthur W. Page Society, there has been a healthy debate about the very term stakeholder. Judy Samuelson, executive director and founder of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, and author of “The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World,” spoke at a Page conference and webinar and wrote a blog post about her objection to the term stakeholder. Essentially, she views the term as too generic and says employees are the company and more than a stakeholder.
Page President Roger Bolton wrote a blog post in response, asserting that all stakeholders, including employees but also customers, investors, communities, need to receive value from companies and their interests heard and balanced with those of others.
Outside of this intelligent debate on stakeholders and the meaning of CSR, others have been striving to give a more clear and universal understanding of what it means for a company to be socially responsible. Some, like Christopher Marquis in his book “Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism,” assert that the old economic “externalities” isn’t enough. In other words, businesses often say they avoid negative externalities or generate positive externalities–meaning harm or benefit to publics or stakeholders beyond the company itself. But a better concept is “interdependencies,” which removes the focus from positive or negative consequences of an organization working autonomously and stresses that corporations need to work collaboratively with stakeholders.
All of the above is good and interesting, but what happens when a company takes a specific position on a controversial issue?
CSA Dangerously Takes the Side of Some Over Others
A more recent trend of discussion in the field of public relations and among chief communications officers (CCOs) has been the notion of corporate purpose, and the extension of that is corporate advocacy (CSA) or even activism.
The Institute for Public Relations recently hosted Fred Cook of Golin and the USC Annenberg School of Communications to present their report on the Future of Corporate Activism. In the report, research shows that 77% of PR professionals say polarization is a problem for them doing their job, more think corporate activism is good for the brand. But the professionals also think three issues is a maximum number of social causes with which to associate, and that there is a risk so any activism has to be done in a way that is “unifying and humanizing,” in Cook’s words.
Meanwhile, another Page Society webinar was with Fortune Magazine’s Alan Murray, on the occasion of the release of his new book “Tomorrow’s Capitalist.” Murray interviews many CEOs and concludes they think very differently about their jobs now than 10 years ago. He points out that there is no tradeoff between purpose and profits, and that it took 100 years to come up with metrics for shareholder value so we will arrive at good metrics for stakeholder value.
Murray also said that thinking long-term is key. While there might be loss in profit in the short term over taking a stand on an issue, that trade-off is diminished over time. Part of the reason for this may be that 85% of the value of a Fortune 500 company today is in intangibles as opposed to physical product and property.
There is also a significant pushback against the whole wave of corporate activity in the social justice sphere. Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and CEO himself, argues forcefully that many corporations’ actions in response to social issues are insincere, a cow-towing to “woke’ pressure and constitutes a “scam.’ Those are strong words, but you should consider his argument in his book “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”
Coming to Consensus
Having considered all of the above, and the decision on whether a CEO or company should take a stand on an issue or become a corporate activist on the social cause du jour, I have a measured response. I don’t think any company should jump on every issue or come to a judgment too quickly. Consider the mess Disney got itself in. Or consider the recent Supreme Court leak of documents regarding abortion law. Many PR firms and CCOs are counseling CEOs to say nothing on that issue. Sometimes polarization is a lose-lose proposition. We need to consider that stakeholder groups can be at odds with each other–eg. employees having differences with customers–but also there can be division within groups–such as some employees being pro-life and others being pro-choice.
I asked Murray if tolerance and respect for diversity of opinion and nuanced corporate statements would be acceptable these days. He said, “good question, it’s hard, and requires thought and strategy.”
This is why I like Paul Argenti’s view of corporate activism and speaking out on issues. It is more rational than emotional, and thus strategic. His article in Harvard Business Review offers a good framework for taking each issue, one at a time, and seeing if it aligns with corporate values, purpose and most importantly practice before jumping into the fray.
My bottom line? Responsibility means listening to and considering all stakeholders and balancing their interests. It is fundamental public relations, consistent with stakeholder theory.. Advocacy means choosing some stakeholders over and against others. The question isn’t just what stance to take, but whose? Strategy and ethics both require considering the difference carefully. CCOs should always counsel for social responsibility, but be very judicious about counseling for corporate advocacy or activism.
